U.S. Affirms Shell, Statoil Arctic Oil-Lease Purchases

The 2008 U.S. sale of Alaska oil
leases, which raised more than $2.6 billion from companies
including Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and Statoil ASA, was reaffirmed
today by the Interior Department.

The companies were held back from drilling in the Chukchi
Sea after a U.S. District Court judge ordered the department in
2010 to do more environmental analysis. The ruling was triggered
by a lawsuit filed by the North Slope village of Point Hope and
environmental groups.

Shell, which paid $2.1 billion for tracts in the sale,
plans to drill as many as three wells a year during the 2012 and
2013 exploration seasons, The Hague-based company said in a plan
filed in May.

Federal offshore-drilling regulators haven’t decided
whether to approve that proposal. Today’s decision affirming the
lease sale, announced in an e-mailed statement from the Interior
Department, clears the way to finish the exploration-plan
review, according to Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh.

“We look forward to begin exploring this critical part of
our Alaska portfolio in 2012,” op de Weegh said today in an e-
mailed statement.

Statoil ASA (STL) of Stavanger, Norway, which holds 66 leases in
the Chukchi Sea, plans to start exploration in 2014 at the
earliest, Lars Andreas Sunde, head of Statoil’s office in
Anchorage, Alaska, said in an e-mail on Sept. 12.

The Chukchi Sea may hold 15 billion barrels of oil, the
U.S. said in 2008 when marketing the sale.

“If an oil spill were to happen in the Arctic’s extreme,
remote conditions, there is no proven method and almost no
resources available to clean it up,” Emilie Surrusco, a
spokeswoman for the Alaska Wilderness League, said today in a
statement. The Washington-based organization was among the
plaintiffs in the initial lawsuit.